1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device, method, and recording medium having an image processing program recorded therein, for calculating a positional relationship between captured three-dimensional images of the same patient.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in the field of medicine, a plurality of captured three-dimensional images of the same patient have been aligned and compared to support diagnosis. It takes a lot of time to calculate the positional relationship between the three-dimensional images. Therefore, it is considered that the positional relationship is calculated for each combination of the three-dimensional images in advance, is stored, and is used for the subsequent calculation process. However, the number of combinations of the three-dimensional images increases exponentially with an increase in the number of three-dimensional images. Therefore, it is not practical to calculate the positional relationships between all of the three-dimensional images and to store the positional relationships.
In contrast, for example, WO2012/069833A and US2010/0202709A disclose a method which, when a plurality of captured three-dimensional images 41 to 45 of the same subject are acquired as illustrated in FIG. 8, uses one three-dimensional image 43 as a reference image, calculates transformation functions T1 to T4 for transformation from the reference image 43 to the other images 41, 42, 44, and 45, stores the transformation functions T1 to T4, and calculates the positional relationship between the three-dimensional images other than the reference image 43 on the basis of the transformation function for transformation from the reference image 43 to each three-dimensional image. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 8, the positional relationship between the three-dimensional images 41 and 44 is calculated by the operation of the transformation function T1 for transformation from the reference image 43 to the three-dimensional image 41 and the transformation function T3 for transformation from the reference image 43 to the three-dimensional image 44.